1 the perfecte paterne of a Poete: A key phrase, resonantly alliterative, on the central topic both of October in particular and the Calender in general (cf. Montrose 1979). Once a variant of ‘patron’, the word ‘paterne’ suggests both a ‘shape’ and a ‘model’ (OED)—a shape with a specific design and a model to be imitated because it is worthy (OED)—while ‘perfect’ records the truth-value of the exemplar. E.K. sees the perfect pattern in a person, a ‘Poete’, suggesting that Cuddie is both an excellent poet and worthy of emulation by others. E.K.’s identification of Cuddie as a perfect pattern of a poet contradicts the eclogue itself, for Cuddie’s presence here (and throughout the Calender) evokes a popular youthful poet of misguided ambitions--a model for no one. E.K. was the first to speculate on who Cuddie represents: ‘I doubte whether by Cuddie be specified the authour selfe . . . some doubt that the persons be different’ ([1]). As such, Cuddie functions as a surrogate for both Spenser and Colin (Var 7: 374-6): ‘Through this complex presentational device, Cuddie is made to stand in relation to Colin as Colin stands to [Spenser]’ (McCabe 1999: 559).

2–3 complayneth of the contempte of Poetrie: Cuddie’s complaint becomes a staple of English Renaissance literary criticism, as illustrated by Philip Sidney’s Defence.

5 so worthy and commendable an arte: This particular ‘defense of poetry’ is another staple of contemporary criticism. October both defends poetry and carries out a dialogue on its defense.

5–6 rather no arte, but a diuine gift: Another major topic of literary criticism, whether poets are born or made. E.K.’s self-correction rehearses the debate. His subsequent phrasing records the model that most resembles Spenser’s: ‘not to bee gotten by laboure and learning, but adorned with both’. E.K. distinguishes between the poet as vates or ‘prophet’ and the poet as craftsman or ‘maker’; see Oct gl 27 and cf. Sidney, Defence 1975: 77.

10 the English Poete: A lost work, referred to only here, and arguably the originary treatise on English poetics. E.K.'s Argument suggests the terms of the treatise and its direction: a defense of the English poet--and English poetry--that responds to contemporary indictments by relying on classical precedents and by featuring the English poet as both divinely inspired and hard-working, at once a vates and a maker.

11 publish: At this time, the word meant ‘make public’ or ‘promulgate’, but it was acquiring the modern sense of ‘appear in print’ (OED), a sense reinforced here through the word ‘booke’.

1.0 Pierce: See Maye Arg, where Piers represents a progressive Protestant; here he is a defender of the poet (headnote). The name is variously spelled Pierce, Piers, even Pires: ‘Uniquely in the Calender, his name is metamorphic. . . : as Piers he is the Protestant rock (with hints of Pieria, home of the Muses); as Pierce and Pires he is piercingly perceptive (pire = peer closely, scrutinize . . . )’ (Brooks-Davies 1995: 159).

1.0 Cuddie: For notes on this name, see Februarie and August. Of all shepherds in the Calender, Cuddie comes closest to representing the traditional poet writing in 1570s England—an ‘amateur’ with the ambitions of a ‘professional’—from which Spenser will invent the modern conception of the ‘laureate’ (see headnote).

1–78 Cvddie . . . better melodie: In the first half of the dialogue, Spenser ‘imitates’ Mantuan, Ecl 5, a debate between a younger shepherd, Candidus, and an older patron, Silvanus. In particular, Spenser borrows three topics from Mantuan, as well as from Barclay’s adaptation: ‘the poverty of poets because of niggardly patrons; the absence of heroic figures about whom poets can write inspired poetry; and the difficulty of finding a mode appropriate to the historical moment. . . . Spenser, Mantuan, and Barclay . . . derive a model relationship between poet, patron, and historical moment from Virgil’s poetic progression under Maecenas’ (Hoffman 1977: 16). In keeping with Renaissance theories of imitation, Spenser both follows Mantuan and Barclay and radically changes them, as registered in notes below. In general, where Mantuan and Barclay fixate on the poet’s sour complaint against poverty, Spenser devotes much of his attention to the high art of poetry.

1–5 Cvddie . . . bydding base: Cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.1-5, from which Spenser draws ‘the motif of soporific heaviness’ (Hoffman 1977: 15). Where Silvanus accuses a sleepy Candidus of abandoning his once vital art and his community, Piers emphasizes the effect of the poet’s sleepiness on his community.

2 chace: Often used of driving cattle or sheep.

3 Phoebus race: ‘Course of the sun’, i.e., a day. Phoebus Apollo is the god of poetry, and ‘race’ is the eclogue’s first metaphor of competition (see 5n).

5 bydding base: In the game of prisoner’s base, ‘bid the base’ refers to one player challenging another to run from home base. Here the game functions as a metaphor for a youthful singing contest, as its listing with ‘rymes’ and ‘ridles’ indicates and as its performance by ‘laddes’ suggests.

7–12 Piers, I haue pyped . . . her straine: Cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.21-37. (See 11n.)

11 Grashopper: Cf. Aesop, Fables no. 336, for the ant who stores up food in summer for the winter and the grasshopper who sings during the summer only to starve during the winter.

13–18 The dapper ditties . . . can arise: Cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.55-7, which lacks Cuddie’s adept representation of an amateur art of poetry as a toy of youth.

13 dapper ditties: The phrase aptly describes Cuddie’s art, hinting at why he has failed to secure patronage; his subsequent language adds detail: he has aimed to ‘feede youthes fancie’ (cater to the adolescent imagination) by ‘Delight[ing them] . . . much’ with ‘pleasure’. Cf. Drayton, Shepherds Garland, Eclogue 3.10: ‘tune thy reede to dapper virelayes’.

15 bett: Cf. Chaucer, CT Man of Law 114: ‘Bet is to dyen than have indigence’.

17 I . . . flye: ‘I flush out the birds while others catch them’.

19–30 Cuddie, the prayse . . . hound did tame: Cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.39-80, in which Silvanus claims that the gods have given him wealth and Candidus the gift of poetry, with Candidus retorting that he just wants to eat. In contrast, Piers outlines a full ethical theory of poetry and cites Orpheus as a model (see 28-30n below).

19–20 price . . . gayne: Cf. 1 Cor 9:24-5: ‘Knowe ye not, that they which runne in a race, runne all, yet one receiveth the price? so runne, that ye may obteine. And everie man that proveth masteries, absteineth from all things: and they do it to obteine a corruptible crown: but we for an uncorruptible’; 1 Pet 5:4: ‘And when the chief shepherd shal appeare, ye shall receive an incorruptible crowne of glorie’.

21–24 to restraine . . . trayned willes entice : An evocation of poetry’s moral function, explaining why poetry is honorable: it uses counsel to restrain loose desire; and it unlooses desire only to rein it in. For Piers, the goal of poetry is not, as Cuddie thinks, to 'feede youthes fancie' but to ‘trayne’ the ‘will’ of ‘lawlesse youth’.

23 pleasaunce . . . vaine: ‘The delight your talent or style can give’. For the Horatian dictum of utile dulci (profit and pleasure), see Ars Poetica 343.

24 their trayned willes entice: Piers's reference to enticing 'trayned willes' evokes the bait- and-switch (using Horatian dulce to make utile seem sweet) that Sidney famously describes in The Defense of Poesy: 'For even those had-hearted evil men who think virtue a school name, and know no other good but indulgere genio, and therefore despise the austere admonitions of the philosopher, and feel not the inward reason they stand upon, yet will be content to be delighted - which is all the good-fellow poet seemeth to promise - and so steal to see the form of goodness (which seen they cannot but love) ere themselves be aware, as if they took a medicine of cherries' (1975: 93). This is oddly close to the sense OED lists as primary for the verb train: 'To entice or induce into a mistake; to lead astray deceive, take in'.

27 sence bereaue: Piers contradicts his speech at 21-4, where he claims that poetry is honorable because it is a rational and ethical force in society. For the first time in October, the unsettling language of the sublime arrests the civilizing view of the poet. In his gloss, E.K. repeats Piers’ phrase, highlighting a kinship between the two figures.

28–30 All as . . . did tame: The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is a ‘myth of the power of poetry over the law of death’ (Lotspeich, Var 7: 381). Key versions of the myth appear in only when the musician breaks the divine decree not to look back at his wife (‘withouten leave’) does he lose her for good. Spenser may ‘pointedly and deliberately reject . . . Virgil’s innovation [of featuring Orpheus’ failure] and look beyond him to the earlier state of the myth’, according to which Orpheus succeeds in recovering Eurydice (Pugh 2016: 36). Even so, Spenser’s representation is fraught with ill omen via ‘balefull’ and ‘hellish’. He will go on to refer to the Orpheus myth throughout his poetry (e.g., Time 332-3; Epith 16; FQ IV.ii.1; HL 234-5). On the myth generally, see Segal 1989. On the myth in Spenser, see Cain 1971; Loewenstein 1986; P. Cheney 1993.

29 balefull bowre: A dangerous abode--the underworld--evoking Pluto’s abduction of Proserpina while she gathered flowers, and then his marriage to her in Hades (Ovid, Fasti 4.417-54, Met 5.385-408).

30 hellish hound: Cerberus, the triple-headed dog who guards the entrance to Hades, tamed by Orpheus’ song as the musician rescues Eurydice from the underworld.

31–32 So praysen babes . . . blazing eye: ‘Spenser had his Mantuan by him as he wrote’, although the conceit derives from Juvenal, Satires 7.30-2 (Renwick, Var 7: 382). Like the tale of Orpheus, this is a myth about the origin of poetry: Mercury beguiles Argus by playing ‘an oaten reed’ and then narrating the reed’s origins in the story of Pan pursuing Syrinx (Ovid, Met 1.568-747). For Argus, see Julye 154 and Sept 203. (For Pan and Syrinx, see Apr 50-1 and 91-4.)

37–40 clowne: . . . dust, . . . giusts. . . . crowne,: Although Walter Scott imitates it (presumably from instances in The Faerie Queene), 1581 is plainly baffled by what seems to be an unprecedented spelling of jousts. As for the misleading punctuation of 1579, which 1597 slightly ameliorates, it can be simply relieved by swapping the punctuation at the ends of lines 37 and 38 and of lines 39 and 40, as we have done.

37–42 Abandon . . . browne: For the turn from pastoral to epic, cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.126-8. Marlowe notably imitates Spenser’s passage in the prologue to 1 Tamburlaine (Bakeless 1964: 1:208; P. Cheney 1997: 118-21).

39 Mars: The epic subject of Homer’s Iliad, but especially Virgil’s Aen 1.1: Arma virumque cano (‘Arms and the man I sing’).

42 helmes vnbruzed: Spenser reprises the image in the bruised arms of the Redcrosse Knight at FQ I.i.3. Cf. Shakespeare, Henry V 5.Prologue.18: 'bruised helmet'; Rape of Lucrece 110: ‘With bruised arms and wreaths of victory’ (110); Richard III 1.1.6: ‘Our bruised arms hung up for monuments’.

43 fluttryng: ‘Of birds. . . : To move or flap the wings rapidly without flying . . . or hang upon wing in the air’ (OED), citing as its first sixteenth-century example ‘1535 Bible (Coverdale) Isa. xxi. A, ‘Like as byrdes flotre aboute their nestes.’ The biblical allusion suggests that the bird fluttering its wings and stretching itself over its nest is the Muse hatching her poem. See 44n.

44 from East to West: The Roman ‘translation of learning and empire’ (translatio studii et imperii), extended to Elizabethan imperialism, which Piers sees as the subject of epic (Upton, Var 7: 382). The concept of ‘from East to West’ will recur in Spenser’s poetry (e.g., FQ I.i.5.5). Cf. Marlowe, 1 Tamburlaine: ‘So from the East unto the furthest West / Shall Tamburlaine extend his puissant arm’ (3.3.246-7).

45–48 Whither thou list . . . did bring: Piers identifies two possible subjects for the epic poem that he advises Cuddie to write: ‘Elisa’, Spenser’s figure for Queen Elizabeth; and Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester (named by E.K. at [47]), Spenser’s own patron.

45 Elisa: Cf. Apr 33.

46 bigger . . . sing: A song celebrating Leicester would be ‘bigger’ than one celebrating Elizabeth perhaps because she is not a military figure; it may also reflect Leicester’s penchant for militarism.

47 the worthy: For Spenser, the word would have had both aristocratic and heroic associations (cf. OED), an apt epithet for Leicester; it also evokes the Nine Worthies.

48 white beare: The Dudley crest displayed a bear chained to an uprooted tree stump (‘stake’).

49–54 And when the stubborne stroke . . . Heauen sownde: Piers inserts into the Virgilian turn from pastoral to epic the genre of love poetry, substituting it for the mediating genre of georgic (see headnote). As 53 reveals, Spenser imagines ‘Elisa’ to be a fit subject of love poetry. That Piers considers such verse an integral part of a career linking pastoral to epic is clear from line 54, which serves as conclusion to the larger passage (37-54): ‘So mought our Cuddies name to Heaven sownde’ (see note below). Spenser’s insertion of love lyric into the poet’s career has no basis in either Mantuan or Barclay (cf. Renwick, Var 7: 384). Spenser might have taken a hint from Sannazaro’s Arcadia (Nash 1966: chapter 7, pp. 74-5), where ‘Sannazaro is to move on [after writing pastoral] to an intermediate kind of poetry, and thence to heroic verse’---‘Perhaps his Ovidian imitation, Salices, was part of a projected series of Latin elegiacs celebrating Fauns and Nymphs’ (Nash 1966: 74n).

49 stubborne stroke of stronger stounds: Spenser does not specify what might cause the poet to turn to love poetry as a respite from epic—except the potency of desire itself.

50 Has . . . string: Spenser will re-use the image of the relaxed strings of a lyre at FQ I.xi.7.7-8.

51 loue and lustihead: A metonym for Petrarchan verse, evoking the subject of erotic poetry, sexual desire, and its goal, pleasure.

52 And carrol . . . rownde: Cf. P. Fletcher, Piscatorie Eclogue 2.5: ‘And carol lowd of love, and love’s delight’.

54 So mought our Cuddies name to Heauen sownde: Represents the link between poetic fame and Christian glory, the reputation of the poet reaching the kingdom of God. See Virgil, Ecl 9.27-9, for a classical analogue: Vare, tuum nomen . . . cantantes sublime fervent ad sidera cynci [‘Varus, thy name . . . singing swans shall bear aloft to the stars’]; see also Aen 1.379.

55–60 Indeede the Romish . . . here: Virgil’s generic progression from pastoral (Eclogues) through georgic (Georgics) to epic (Aeneid) first appears in a four-line verse prefacing the Aeneid since Roman times: ‘I am he who formerly tuned my song on a slender reed, then, leaving the woodland, compelled the neighboring fields to obey the husbandman, however grasping, a work pleasing to farmers: but now I turn to Mars [war]’. These lines established a paradigm for the poetic career. Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues 5.86-8, perhaps the first European pastoral recording the Virgilian career: Tityrus (ut fama est) sub Maecenate vetusto / rura, boves et agros et Martia bella canebat / altius et magno pulsabat sidera cantu (‘Under Maecenas’ care of old, Tityrus [so men say] sang more loftily of the countryside, of the oxen and fields, and of the wars of Mars; and with his mighty song he battered the heavens’; trans. Piepho). Barclay scrambles the sacred order by putting georgic before pastoral (Hoffman 1977: 19): ‘And Titerus (I trowe) was this shepherdes name, / I will remember alive yet is his fame. / He songe of fieldes and tilling of the grounde, / Of shepe, of oxen, and battayle did he sounde. / So shrill he sounded in termes eloquent, / I trowe his tunes went to the firmament’ (Ecl 4.411-6). It is appropriate to make Virgil the central exemplar of the poet in October because he was born in this month. Spenser opens The Faerie Queene by announcing his own progression from pastoral to epic (I.pr.1).

55 Indeede . . . heare: Cf. Boccaccio, Ecl 1.82-5, 5.56, 10.66-7. For Sannazaro’s representation of the three-part Virgilian career, see Arcadia, chapter 10, pp. 104-5 (Nash 1966).

56 Mecœnas: Caius Cilnius Maecenas, a loyal supporter of the Emperor Augustus and a patron of Virgil and Horace. He came to be seen as a type of generous patron of poets. For Spenser, as for Mantuan and Barclay, the relation between Maecenas and Virgil thus represents a lost ideal relating the poet and patron to the nation.

57 taught his flocks to feede: Tityrus/Virgil embodies the motif of shepherding as instruction, introduced at To His Booke 10 and exemplified throughout the Calender. For the English ‘Tityrus’, Chaucer, as an educator, see June 81-8; for Thenot’s application of this education to Cuddie, see Feb 91-101.

58 laboured: With reference to Virgil’s Georgics, which emphasizes the importance of farm work. The phrase ‘timely eare’ connects harvest with the poet’s reception.

59 sing of warres and deadly drede: Imitating the opening line of the Aeneid (see 39n), and revised for the opening of The Faerie Queene: ‘Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song’ (I.pr.1.9).

60 So as the Heauens did quake his verse to here: An imitation of Mantuan and Barclay (see 55-60n). Spenser’s verb, ‘quake’, changes Mantuan’s pulsabet (‘resound’, ‘beat at’), and Barclay’s ‘went’, while Spenser’s subject, ‘Heavens’, changes Mantuan’s sidera (‘stars’) and Barclay’s ‘firmament’. Spenser also changes the syntax, introducing a slightly comical tone, for the heavens are afraid of the poet—perhaps appropriate for a representation of pagan culture (cf. Cuddie at 54).

61–63 But ah . . . in leade: Cf. June 89. Barnfield echoes these lines in ‘As it fell upon a Day’, originally published under Shakespeare’s name in the concluding poem to The Passionate Pilgrim (1599): ‘King Pandion, he is dead: / All thy friends are lapp’d in lead’ (20.23-4).

63 wrapt in leade: Used also at June 89 and Nov 59. Refers to the practice of wrapping the body in a lead sheet for burial.

65–66 For euer . . . loued aye: Cf. Mantuan, Eclogues 5.153-6: at qui dura manu gesserunt bella potenti / fortiter utentes ferro, non molliter auro, / dilexere graves Musas; heroica facta / qui faciunt reges heroica carmina laudent (‘But kings who with their mighty hands vigorously waged war and bravely revelled in arms, not spinelessly in gold—these men loved the grave muses. Kings who do heroic deeds praise heroic verses’; trans. Piepho).

65 derring doe: Cf. ‘derring to’ at Dec 43, glossed by E.K. using the lemma ‘derring doe’ (see Dec gl 86n for explanation).

67–72 But after . . . shamefull coupe: Cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.157-9.

72 pend: If the reading in 1579 is to be trusted, 'pend' would pun on 'penned', written with a quill, as the avian metaphor of ‘coupe’ invites. Yet the reading of the lemma for E.K.s gloss is 'Pent', which may be closer to the reading in Spenser's autograph.

73–76 And if . . . rybaudrye: Cf. Mantuan, Ecl 5.148-50; Chaucer, CT Pardoner 324-5: ‘Nay, lat hym telle us no ribaudye! / Telle us som moral thyng’.

75 forst to fayne: ‘Either it must ignore (or dissemble) man’s follies’.

78 Tom Piper: Nickname for a local village piper, often associated with those who accompany Morris dancers---here a trope for an ignorant amateur poet. Cf. Drayton, Pastorals, Eclogue 3.29-32: ‘I care not the while, / My selfe above Tom Piper to advance, / Which so bestirs him at the Morrice Dance, / For penny wage’.

79–120 O pierlesse Poesye . . . store his farme: This second half of the eclogue has no precedent in Mantuan or Barclay (cf. Renwick, Var 7: 387).

79–84 O pierlesse Poesye . . . flye backe to heauen apace: Piers’ outburst on the proper ‘place’ of poetry dilates between two prospects: ‘Princes pallace’ and ‘heaven’. He identifies the royal court as the ‘fitt’ place for poetry (81), but adds that if poetry fails to find reception at court, the poet should turn to a contemplative, divine poetry, which the Renaissance associated with the hymn (cf. Rollinson 1968). Already in 1579, Spenser registers that the Protestant poet’s career may necessitate a turn from courtly to contemplative poetry. Piers’ lines 85-96 go on to link the hymn with Neoplatonism, as their common metaphor, that of winged flight, suggests (see note below).

79 pierlesse: Peerless, but also punning on Piers’ name.

84 flye backe to heauen apace: Identifies the hymn as the final literary form of the poet’s public career (P. Cheney 1993: 19). Cf. Theocritus, Idylls 17.1-4; Virgil, Ecl 3.60, 8.11 (Pugh 2016: 177).

85–96 Ah Percy . . . lowly eye: Cuddie and Piers engage in a dialogue on the topic of Neoplatonic poetry, and situate it with respect to Colin Clout. Whereas Cuddie thinks Colin (alone of their peers) would be able to write such high-flying poetry if his love of Rosalind did not impede him, Piers argues that ‘love’ is what allows Colin to ‘climbe so hie’ (91). This passage anticipates Spenser’s later hymnic verse, both FH and Colin’s great paean to love in CCCHA (835-94), both of which works inscribe Renaissance Neoplatonism (Var 7: 387-9; cf. Ellrodt 1960; McCabe 1999: 562; SpSt 2009). Thus, as early as October, Spenser demonstrates technical knowledge of Platonism and Neoplatonism (Borris, Quitslund, and Kaske 2009: 6; Kaske 2009: 30; Rees 2009: 98; Borris 2009: 461-7; Quitslund 2009: 503, 511—refuting Ellrodt 1960 and Jayne 1995): ‘When Spenser entered Pembroke Hall in 1569, texts of Plato were available and Ficino’s translations and commentaries were in use’ (Rees 2009: 125n1; see 98-124 for her ‘Appendix: Availability of the Works of Ficino and Plato and Their Place in the Cambridge Curriculum’).

87 peeced pyneons: Cf. Plato, Phaedrus 249. The metaphor of Platonic flight will become common in Spenser, as at HHB 26-8. That the pinions are patched suggests an artistic process of poetic making, also evoked in Colin’s last name, Clout, a piece or patch of clothing; that the patched wings are not ‘so in plight’ (in such condition) as to manage the projected flight emphasizes the ragged state of Cuddie’s ‘aspyring wit’, or what E.K. terms his ‘vnperfect skil’.

88 famous flight: Inspired verse that will secure the poet’s fame (P. Cheney 1993). The phrase recalls Troilus’ flight at the end of Troilus and Criseyde (5.1807-27), which ‘would have offered Spenser something rather different from the flight from Petrarchan pastoral to epic’: ‘Chaucer’s poem explicitly refuses to be "heroic"’ (Kinney 2003: 32, 34).

90 as soote as Swanne: The swan is the emblem of the poet’s transcendent verse, here a kind of Neoplatonic hymnody, (cf. Clements 1944). Cf. Virgil, Ecl 9.27-9 (Pugh 2016: 178).

91–96 Ah fon . . . eye: The discourse of Neoplatonic love. Piers argues that it does not matter that Colin’s love is unrequited; his love of Rosalind, a noble form of desire, ‘rayse[s]’ his ‘mynd above the starry skie’. In this, Piers assumes the familiar Platonic Ladder of Love from the Symposium (210a-211b), in which love of physical beauty leads to love of spiritual beauty and finally to the Idea of Beauty itself, an abstraction in the realm of the gods detached from materiality. See 93n. Spenser returns to the imagery in FH: HB 1-7; HL 64-3, 176-77, and 190-96.

93 immortall mirrhor: The phrase is ambiguous, enigmatic. Most directly, it means ‘reflection of the immortal world’ (Brooks-Davies 1995: 164); but, as an object that Colin ‘admire[s]’, it means beauty, the face of the beloved as it reflects the divine, referring to Rosalind (Shore 1985: 57). ‘Spenser probably means Elizabeth as Venus Coelestis, whom, according to Ficino, “dwells in the highest, supercelestial zone of the universe, i.e., in the zone of the Cosmic Mind, and the beauty symbolized by her is the primary and universal beauty of divinity”’ (Cain in Oram 1989: 168, quoting Panofsky 1962: 142). Ficino had featured the image of the mirror: ‘the single face of God shines successively in three mirrors . . . the Angelic Mind, the World Soul, and the [material] Body of the World’ (Commentary 5.4; quoted McCabe 1999: 562).

93 admire: Admiratio, a technical term in Neoplatonism and aesthetics, evoking the way Colin looks into the immortal mirror, gazing in a state of sublime wonder.

94 rayse ones mynd aboue the starry skie: Evokes a transcendent poetic art. The word ‘mynd’ identifies the intellectual faculty producing the art, tapping into Spenser’s innovative interest throughout the Calender in the ‘inwardness’ so important to later writers (Maus 1995). In the Ptolemaic system, the ‘starrie skie’ is the firmament or sphere of the fixed stars, which is above the sphere of the planets and near to primum mobile, the prime mover.

95 aspire: A loaded term. Aspiration is a premier activity of Elizabethan intellectual culture (Esler 1966), evoking both heroic achievement and dangerous overreaching, epitomized in the myths of Icarus and Phaethon. Yet the concept of winged aspiration is also the mark of the classical sublime in Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace (Hardie 2009: 201), Roman authors who attach to aspiration the very metaphors of ascent that Piers voices: ‘climbe so hie . . . lyftes him up . . . rayse ones mynd . . . above the starrie ekie . . . lofty.’ Only later in the first century AD will Longinus call such aspiration the sublime, centering it in Homer, Plato, and the Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, as well as Sappho.

97.0 Cuddie. 1586 ingeniously supplies the speech heading missing from 1579 and 1581.

97–120 All otherwise . . . store his farme: The final part of the dialogue, emphasizing Cuddie’s response to Piers’ high-flying Neoplatonic discourse, presents a corresponding flight into the lofty genre of tragedy, comically abandoned before it is begun; Berger 1988 calls this the 'Vacant Head' model of poetic inspiration (314). The eclogue concludes with Piers taking up the role of patron, promising to award Cuddie a ‘Kidde’ for his lofty attempt (a promise that recalls the Greek festivals where tragedians competed publicly for awards). That Cuddie wins a prize in a competition of one sustains the complex blend of sympathy and humor with which Spensers treats this youthful shepherd.

98–99 Tyranne . . . rules . . . power: The metaphors are ‘political’ (Lane 1993: 165). See 117n.

100 The vaunted verse a vacant head demaundes: See E.K. and note. Cf. Ovid, Tristia 1.1.39-41: carmina proveniunt animo deducta sereno; / nubila sunt subitis pectora nostra malis. / carmina secessum scribentis et otia quaerunt (‘Poetry comes fine spun from a soul at peace; my mind is clouded with unexpected woes. Poetry requires the writer to be in privacy and ease’; see Stapleton 2009: 54). The line pinpoints what Berger describes as the ‘Vacant Head model’ of the poet, epitomized in Cuddie’s ‘plaintive’ poetry: love is an imaginary matter devised for the sake of song, as the youthful poet clears his mind of actuality to enter an idyllic paradise devoid of persons and personal frustration—a poetry on display in March, Aprill, and the August roundelay (Berger 1988: 357-9, 371).

103–114 Who euer casts . . . in her equipage: ‘Reading these words to-day they may well seem to us the charter of the new age of England’s song, and the effect is rendered all the more striking by the rhythm of the last line with its prophecy of Marlowe and mighty music to come’ (Greg, Var 7: 390; see P. Cheney 1993: 61-5). The passage illustrates Spenser’s early interest in drama, especially in tragedy, as revealed elsewhere in his canon (see Dolven 1999). Although Harvey says that Spenser wrote Nine Comedies in imitation of Ariosto (Let 4.267-70), the works are not extant.

103 casts to compasse: ‘Seeks to gain or achieve’. Cf. Sept 83.

104 thondring words of threate: Cf. Gascoigne, ‘The Author to the Reader’, The Steel Glass: ‘In rymeless verse, which thundreth mighty threates’. Cf. also Marlowe, 1 Tamburlaine Prologue.5: ‘Threat’ning the world with high astounding terms’.

105 lauish cups: October is the month of the wine harvest. On Bacchus and wine as inspirations of poetry, see Boccaccio, Gen Deor 5.25.20: ‘Poets are wont to be crowned with the vine, because by their skill they are sacred to Bacchus’; Conti, Myth 5.13. Cf. Jonson’s Conversations with Drummond of Hawthorndon, where Drummond says of Jonson: ‘He hath by heart some verses of Spenser’s Calender, about wine, between Colin [Cuddie] and Percy’. The link between wine and poetic inspiration is traditional (Clements 1955).

105 thriftie bitts: A difficult phrase: 'either frugal cuts or prime cuts' (McCabe 1999:562). Either the meat is lavish like the wine or it is stinted in comparison to the wine (so that the wine overwhelms the meat). If the latter, the friendship of reckless Bacchus and Phoebus involves a complementary antithesis.

106 For Bacchus . . . Phœbus wise: Bacchus is traditionally the god of tragedy, while Phoebus Apollo is the god of music, especially as composed on the lyre and epitomized in heroic poetry. The friendship between Bacchus and Phoebus thus represents a link between tragedy and epic as twin high genres, as featured in Aristotle’s Poetics.

108 spring: Spenser’s recurrent aquatic metaphor of poetic origin. See Apr 35-6n.

109 rage: The concept is ‘the all-consuming subject of Senecan tragedy’ (Braden 1985: 2). Beginning in 1569, Seneca’s tragedies were being translated into English (Senecas Tenne Tragedies is published in 1581). Rage is also ‘Platonic’, evoking ‘furor poeticus’: ‘Both Cuddie’s statement and [E.K.’s] . . . apparatus to it represent technical doctrinaire Florentine Neoplatonism’ (Kaske 2009: 30). In fact, ‘The most clearly Platonic and Ficinian notion in Spenser’s canon is that a beneficial kind of frenzy or madness magnifies creative achievement in love, in literature, and in the highest human endeavors’ (Borris, Quitslund, and Kaske 2009: 6). Spenser modulates the high seriousness of this doctrine--- buttressed with a number of classical allusions (see gl 141n)---by embodying it in the conspicuously inadequate Cuddie, so that its lofty claims to divine access are hedged with humor.

111 Yuie: Ivy crowns poets in Virgil, Ecl 7.25, 8.12-3. For the link between ivy and learning, cf. Horace, Odes 1.1.29; Philostratus, Imagines 1.18.23.

112 Muse: Melpomene, Muse of tragedy. Cuddie’s reference—and his speech on tragedy—builds a narrative bridge to the next eclogue, November, where Colin delivers a funeral elegy on Queen Dido, which begins, ‘Up then Melpomene thou mournefulst Muse of nyne’ (53). For Melpomene’s role in Teares, see 115-74.

112 stately stage: The word ‘stately’ can mean ‘grand, elevated, dignified’, but also, more precisely, ‘of state’, suggesting that Cuddie’s tragic theater treats its subject as the grandeur of the political state, a commonplace of criticism on the genre.

113 in buskin: For Dame Tragedy wearing the buskin, see, e.g, Ovid, Amores 3.1.11-14.

114 queint: E.K.’s gloss is probably correct but the term had a variety of connotations, from ‘skilled’ to ‘cunning’ to ‘haughty’. Cf. Chaucer, Rom 65-6: ‘And makith so queynt his robe and faire / That it hath hewes an hundred payre’.

114 Bellona: The goddess of war (cf. Lucan, Civil War 1.565-6). Bellona was distinct from Pallas Athena but became associated with her in the Renaissance (Brooks-Davies 1995: 170-1).

114 equipage: Properly understood as martial accouterment rather than, as E.K. maintains, ‘order’, but ‘retinue’ is also possible.

117 tydes: Cuddie’s phrase ‘troublous tydes’ is nebulous yet ominous, in keeping with the discourse of the sublime; his contentment to stay in the ‘humble shade’, where he can ‘safely’ write pastoral, evokes the political danger of writing tragedy, a genre, Sidney says in The Defence, that ‘maketh kings fear to be tyrants’ (96). Effectively, Cuddie’s speech ends where it began, with references to tyranny, rule, and power (98-9 and note).

118 Here . . . charme: Virgil, Ecl 10.50-1: Ibo et Chalcidico quae sunt mihi condita versu / Carmina, pastoris Siculi modulabor avena (‘I will be gone, and the strains I composed in Chalcidean verse I will play on a Sicilian shepherd’s pipe’).

119–120 And when . . . farme: For the pastoral promise of a gift, see Mantuan, Ecl 5.182-4: iuro / me tibi, si venti veniant ad vela secundi, / laturum auxilium (‘I swear . . . that if favorable winds fill my sails, I will bring help to you’; trans. Piepho).

121 Piers’ emblem is notably missing, but E.K. refers to it in his gloss [Embleme]; only Cuddie’s emblem is printed.

122 Agitante . . . etc: Part of a line in Ovid, Fasti 6.5: ‘[There is a god within us.] It is when he stirs us that our bosom warms’.

7–8 Cuddie . . . authour selfe: See headnote.

9 Cantion: From the It canzona ‘song’.

9 as he sayth: At Aug 139-95, Cuddie arrives to judge the singing contest between Willye and Perigot, and afterwards he records Colin’s sestina.

12 Auena: L for ‘reed pipe’. Cf. Virgil, Ecl 1.2.

17–18 Plato . . . de Legibus: E.K.’s information here is not in Plato’s Laws.

27 vatem: Seer, visionary. Writers on Renaissance poetics often distinguish between vates (prophet) and poeta (maker); see comment at Oct Arg 15. William Webbe uses this section of the gloss in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), B3r.

35–49 Plato . . . brests: Plato cites Pythagoras at Phaedo 86b-d, discussing the effects of different kinds of melodies, and seeing an analogy between music and politics (see Laws 2.655a-660a, 3.700a-701b). In the Republic, Socrates prohibits certain kinds of poetry from the ideal state because of their danger to youths and citizens (10.605c-607d). E.K.’s reference to Aristotle may be Politics 8.7.

38–39 Alexander . . . Timotheus: Suda, the important Byzantine encyclopedia, tells the story under the title ‘Timotheus’.

71 Erle of Leycester: Robert Dudley. Between early 1579 and mid-1580, Spenser served as secretary to Leicester. By the time the Calender was published, however, Leicester had been banished from court by the Queen, who was outraged at both his clandestine marriage to Lettice Knollys and his opposition to her own proposed marriage to d’Alençon.

71 cognisance: E.K. is correct in asserting that the bear and ragged staff was the cognizance of other families, but it clearly refers to the Dudley family. Cf. Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI 5.1.203: ‘The rampant bear chain’d to the ragged staff’.

96 Oration: See Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta 10.24.

96–100 Petrarch . . . tromba: RS 187.1-4.

102 Scipio: See Cicero, Pro Archia Poeta 9.22.

104–105 Alexander . . . Pindarus: See Plutarch, Alexander 11.4-6 and 26.1-4; Pliny, Natural History 7.29.109.

111 Darius: See Plutarch, Alexander 8.2-3; 26; Pliny, Natural History 7.29.108.

120 Pent: As observed above, Apr 72 reads ‘pend.’ We see no grounds for preferring one reading to the other.

84 Bucoliques: We preserve this reading, corrected in 1586, since there is no reason to believe that it misrepresents the copy from which 1579 was printed. Although ‘Bucoliques’ properly designates Virgil’s pastoral eclogues, E.K. is plainly referring to the Georgics.

131 The siluer swanne: This poem is lost, but for the myth of the swan singing before it dies, see Time 589-95. At Tristia 5.1.14, Ovid compares his poem to the song of a dying swan.

135–136 Fiorir . . . affanni: RS 60.3-4: ‘[The noble tree, i.e. the laurel, Laura] made my weak wit flower in its shade and grow in my troubles’.

138–139 I think this . . . a fault: Where the eclogue becomes loftiest, E.K. disparages the poet’s style.

140 Cacozelon: The Latin form of the Greek term is cacozelia, ‘bad imitation’. In rhetoric, the term is used for stylistic affectation (also called ambitio), with E.K. here referring to the line’s four-beat alliteration. The term was ‘the defect most frequently attributed to Virgil’s verse by his early commentators’ (W.J. Kennedy 1990: 99).

141–142 Mantuanes . . . Poscit: ‘Divine [poetry] demands a mind empty of cares’. The saying is not Mantuan’s, though a version of the idea appears at Ecl 5.18-9: laudabile carmen / omnem operam totumque caput, Silvane, requirit (‘A praiseworthy song, Silvanus, requires all my toil and thought’; trans. Piepho). Also, cf. Cicero, Epistuulae Ad Quintum Fratrem 3.4.4; Juvenal, Satires 7.63-6; Ovid, Heroides 15.14.

143–144 Fæcundi . . . disertum: ‘The flowing bowl--whom has it not made eloquent?' (Horace, Epistles 1.5.19).

145 Poetical furie: The furors were different kinds of inspiration: poetic, heroic, erotic, divine (Allen 1993). Sidney cites Plato’s Ion (534a-e) as a source for the notion in his Defence of Poetry 1975: 108.

156–157 Solo . . . cothurno: ‘your songs . . . alone are worthy of the buskin of Sophocles [i.e. tragedy]’ (Ecl 8.10).

157 Magnum . . . cothurno: ‘[Aeschylus] taught [actors] a lofty speech and stately gait on the buskin’ (Ars Poetica 280).

159 Lucian: Cf. Dialogues of the Gods, ‘Hephaestus and Zeus’ 225-6.

162–163 whom . . . comely: ‘Whom, when Vulcan saw her to be so fair and comely’.

170 Ouid: E.K. remembers Amores 3.7.27-30 on charms but mistakenly misquotes Aen 4.487: haec se carminibus (‘with her spells’).

137 Petrachs While 1586 adopts the more familiar English form, we preserve the spelling of 1579; it is instanced in print a few times prior to 1579, notably in Ascham’s Scholemaster. It appears again in Let 2.587.

174 Epiphonematicós: By way of epiphonema (acclamatio), a pithy way to summarize or end a discourse.

174 Piers answereth: Indicates that Piers’ emblem existed, but it is missing in all editions.